Russian Law Leaves Bodies in Limbo, Raising Muslim Ire

Published: October 31, 2005

The bodies of 89 men, wrapped in black bags, are laid out in two refrigerated railroad cars at a militia post on the edge of town. The authorities refuse to return them to relatives for burial because of a law that is worsening the climate of anger and distrust that led to the deaths of these men in the first place.

''What kind of terrorist is he?'' Yekaterina Sabanchiyeva said of her only son, Murat. He would have turned 21 this week but he was caught in the violence that swept this city in the Northern Caucasus on Oct. 13, when scores of fighters attacked police and security stations.

''It was not terrorism,'' she added, standing among a group of parents outside Nalchik's main mosque, appealing to officials to release the bodies, as the parents have each day since the fighting stopped. ''They attacked the police.''

Many people here see the attacks as an uprising against corruption and abuse, including arbitrary arrests and police beatings of anyone suspected of embracing Islam. Last year the authorities closed six mosques in Nalchik.

In the Kremlin's effort to curb terrorism, such distinctions hardly matter. Struggling to contain the violence from the war in Chechnya and a rise in Islamic-tinged militancy across the Northern Caucasus, the government has turned to a form of collective punishment.

Under a law adopted in the wake of the siege of a Moscow theater in 2002, which ended with the deaths of at least 129 hostages, the bodies of those considered terrorists have been deemed unworthy of family burials. They are buried instead in anonymity -- and in undisclosed locations.

They have included the 31 terrorists reported killed in the school siege in Beslan last year; Aslan Maskhadov, the former president of Chechnya and rebel leader who died in a raid in March; and dozens of people involved in attacks in or near Chechnya.

The intent of the law is to deny veneration of those who kill innocents, but it also denies families the chance to observe burial rites that are deeply engrained in the traditional cultures of the Caucasus. That has caused an angry reaction here in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkariya, the latest place to have scores of dead.

Takhir Atmurzayev, the deputy mufti of Kabardino-Balkariya, said returning the dead would be a gesture of respect to the Highlanders, as people of this mountainous region are known. ''If they are not buried, it might be another bomb that lands somewhere else in the future,'' he said. He cited Islamic scriptures, saying, ''If a man is not buried, sin falls on all of this place.''

The fighting here killed at least 138 people, including 35 security officers and 14 civilians, the republic's coroner said. Visiting Nalchik on Sunday for the funeral of the republic's former president, who died Saturday, President Vladimir V. Putin denounced the others who died here on Oct. 13 as militants with ''criminal goals.''

But unlike the incident in Beslan, where weapons and camouflage, as well as survivors, easily distinguished those involved, the dead whose bodies are being held included men in civilian clothes and adolescents as young as 15. Most were not fighters from Chechnya's war, but local residents. Many were educated and employed.

Their relatives say that some were simply caught in the cross-fire. One man, who would not give his name, citing fear of reprisal, said his 16-year-old son had asked for money to buy shoes and never came back. The father identified his son's body in the morgue the next day.

Kazbulat B. Kerefov, a defense lawyer and former police officer, went jogging the morning of the attacks. He was last seen outside the apartment building where he lived with his parents. His aunt, Yelena, said he spoke to young men in a sedan shortly before the fighting.

Mr. Kerefov's father, Betal, identified his body eight days later. His limbs and torso were torn with wounds; his body was naked and stacked with others in the railcars.(They have since been put in bags.)

Betal Kerefov worried that the authorities would spirit the bodies away. According to tradition, the family has kept its apartment door ajar, open for visitors expressing condolences. This is supposed to last three days. It has already been more than two weeks. ''Our guys died on both sides,'' Mr. Kerefov said, adding that the refusal to return the bodies of the rest ''means setting one family against the other.''

Saradin Alakayev, 25, had been arrested several times, most recently two days before the attacks. He died in the fighting near a police station. He had a son, who is 4, and a daughter, who is 4 months old. His father, Khauti, said his son had been dismissed from a factory job because the shop manager saw him praying.

''What the authorities did to them, what the police did to them -- this is why they attacked the police,'' Mr. Alakayev said. He drew a distinction that many here have: ''They did not attack schools, kindergartens. They did not attack the children.''

As the violence grinds on in the Caucasus, officials in Moscow have debated stronger punishments for terrorists' families, including seizing assets and even the relatives. But the anguish here has caused some to express concern that a law written in Moscow did not consider local traditions -- and the murkier circumstances of what happened in Nalchik.

''It is not our law,'' said Vladimir Makhov, an officer in the local prosecutor's office, standing outside the two railcars where the bodies remain. ''We would give them back.''

Aleksandr P. Torshin, a member of the upper house of Parliament leading an investigation into Beslan, acknowledged that some of those killed in Nalchik might not have been terrorists, saying it was sometimes difficult to know. ''You cannot interrogate a body,'' he said. He defended the law, but suggested amendments might be necessary to allow a court to determine whether the dead had been terrorists.

''It is much better to give them back the body than to give rise to new hatred,'' he said.

The man at the center of much of the simmering anger here is the republic's former president, Valery Kokov. He ruled the republic like a fief for 14 years until he stepped down last month. He was buried Sunday with full honors after a memorial service attended by Mr. Putin.

Khizir Otarov, an aide to the deputy mufti, said, ''You judge people who are alive by how they respect the dead.''

Photo: Placed in plastic bags and stacked in railroad cars in Nalchik, the bodies of men killed in a fight with the police there on Oct. 13 await burial. (Photo by James Hill for The New York Times)

Map of Russia highlighting Nalchik: Nalchik is the latest center of opposition to an antiterrorism law.